Kathleen, Manon, and John recently shared a video presentation at the European Association for Aquatic Mammals’ 53rd Annual Symposium. And now, we share this abstract and video with you!
Studies of mobile, aquatic species are often limited to surface views, with less data available from underwater. For decades, bottlenose dolphins have been studied from above or at the water’s surface, which constraints research to association patterns, synchronous behaviors, and group movements. Some human-habituated populations have been studied underwater, offering great insights into their social life. Since ~2010, technology flourished to offer smaller waterproof cameras, wider lenses, extended battery life, and increased storage, which impacts cetacean research logistics. More recently, a new vantage has opened a world of possibilities with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV/drones). Still, do drones really provide a better perspective from surface or underwater views? From seven ~30-min. sessions, video from underwater, surface, and drone perspectives were compared to inform overlap versus difference for observations on an ex situ bottlenose dolphin population. We focused comparison on object play, pair swimming position, and contact exchanges. All perspectives were impacted by weather conditions that interfered with underwater visibility or data collection directly. Drone and underwater views offered different advantages to studying specific behaviors. Surface observations could only provide punctuated, point data when animals surfaced or swam by the camera. Although each perspective provided different details, underwater and drone views were complementary and having both available will augment any animal behavior studies.